I live in Northern CA - Sonoma County. I inspected one of my hives about a week ago and noticed capped brood, open larvae, and eggs. But I also noticed an unopened queen cup on the bottom of one of the frames I looked at (definitely a queen cup and not drone). The brood area is 4 mediums - this hive has been very strong in the last couple of years - I only inspected the top box of the brood area. When I spotted the queen cup, I didn't want to chance ruining any others. My question - why would they be raising a new queen when the old one seems to be doing her job? Isn't it late in the year to be doing that?

Supercedure is usually done with less than 6 queen cells and often only one or two. Also of note is that if you find capped queen cells that indicate a supercedure is underway the chances that the queen has already been offed runs about 80%. I've had hives off the queen as soon as there were dedicated queen cells, open, newly hatched larva.

Removing a supercedure cell is a recipe for disaster, or at least a queenless hive.

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